European chemicals output will contract by 1.0% this year before returning to modest growth of 1.5% in 2014, Cefic, the European Chemical Industry Council, said today. The 2013 figure is lower than the 0.5% expansion announced in December 2012, as the economic development to date has been weaker than expected. The gradual recovery will follow stabilization of industrial production in Europe after two years of weakness, and a modest rise in exports. But the European chemicals sector, which generates 1% of the region’s GDP and which employs 1.2...